The latest chatter among the political classes is whether or not the Republican party can regain control of the Senate. There are currently fifty three Democrats and forty five Republicans in the Senate enjoined with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. This makes the control numbers fifty five to forty five. The math is simple – a net change of five seats and the Senate will be tied while six has Nevada’s Reid relinquishing his leadership post to McConnell of Kentucky.

Can it be done? According to many pundits the polls are indicating a done deal. Probabilities of 65% to 75% and even 80% are currently be tossed around as the chance of a change. The probabilities are based on their analysts’ interpretations of the current polls.

But before you either celebrate or toss in the towel be warned – these are July polls at the beginning of the campaign season with high rates of undecided voters.

With the caveat in place we generated our own prediction by running the polls for November’s senate race through our model. This model runs sample elections a million times analyzing all of the likely or even possible outcomes.

Our results – while slightly different from those currently touted – do not bode well for President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate. If the November election were held on July 31 the Republicans would have a 54% chance of taking control of the senate while the Democrats have only a 26% of retaining control.

But 54% is only part of the story. These probabilities add to only 80%. In fact the most common outcome of the model is not a Republican takeover but a tie – fifty Republican and fifty Democratic Senators come January 2.

It is easy to argue that if the change occurs it is a result of the policies of the White House, or a change in voter attitudes, or simply Presidential fatigue in the sixth year of an administration. These are the easy conclusions to make. An alternative is to look at the individual Senate races.

November will see thirty five senate races. Of these twenty one are held by Democrats and fourteen are held by Republicans – a lopsided ratio already putting the Democrats at a disadvantage. If races were decided by a toss of a coin then the 60% to 40% ratio of races would have us expecting the Democrats to lose as many as nine seats while gaining at most one. While the idea of regression to the mean is interesting and surely has some influence, races are not decided randomly.

The second possibility is that of the thirty five races eight seats are open – seven retirements and one resignation. These eight are split five Democrats and three Republicans – another lopsided margin. Two of the Republican seats are in Oklahoma and Nebraska – both strong Republican states and thus unlikely to switch. The only open red seat that might possibly switch to blue is in Georgia where the daughter of the popular Georgia Senator, Sam Nunn, is in the race to replace Saxby Chambliss. While this opens the race up as a possible swing the polls are showing her chances presently as a long shot. Thus all three red vacancies are likely to remain red.

But of the five blue seats that have no incumbent the only safely blue seat is that being opened by Carl Levin’s retirement in Michigan. The other four are all in play. In fact recent polling has the Republican Party picking up the seats in South Dakota and West Virginia with a toss up in Iowa.

As for the rest of the class, there is one incumbent who stands to lose his reelection bid – Pryor of Arkansas. Joining him in the south are Landrieu of Louisiana and Hagans of North Carolina who while polling ahead are still in tight races. Another red state with a Democratic incumbent senator is at the other geographical extreme. Begich of Alaska is in a tight race to retain his seat. The four at risk blue seats are completed by Udall of Colorado who is currently in a dead heat.

While the Republicans have a shot at between one and all four of these seats, there is only one seat on the other side of the aisle that is at risk. It is – surprisingly – the seat of Minority Leader McConnell in Kentucky. And while polling close it is leaning for the incumbent.

What does all of this say about 2016? Little perhaps but not much. Control of the senate in the upcoming Congress will be determined by a half dozen races in a half dozen states. As for the White House in two years, these states are most likely to maintain an ideological course in voting for either a Republican or a Democrat for the next President. Instead the 2016 elections will be determined by the candidates that are running in 2016 – including an entirely different class of senators. And instead of having control be decided by six states all fifty will have the opportunity to make the choice for the White House known.

Decades in the making, the rose gardens at Konopischt were open for two days of public viewing in mid-June 1914. Excursion trains brought thousands of visitors to admire the beds in full bloom at this castle near Prague.

The creator of the rose gardens, Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had transformed a 17th century castle into a Xanadu full of his countless possessions and thousands of hunting trophies mounted on the wall. READ MORE »

The future of American politics will not be written by the Tea Party or the left wing of the Democratic Party. It may be better that way. Reform takes hold when it creates consensus and builds a more durable democracy. Currently we are stuck on a fragile dead center. Shrill voices in the media tear at the treads that bind us, insisting it is not enough to disagree with your opponent. You must question motives and character. Rather than look for facts and study the other side’s position, columnists and bloggers specialize in finding clever ways to demean. President Barack Obama has indifferently watched the country grow more polarized. In this atmosphere, there is little chance that Pres. Obama will achieve any significant legislative victories. He has given up on the current Congress and, given present trends, the next Congress is likely to be less amenable to his proposals.

Obama has shown no interest in finding a governing center. Early in his term he disdained Republican suggestions for health care reform and his stimulus package; he refused to endorse the bi-partisan Simpson-Bowles Commission recommendations for tax and entitlement reform; he has taken no lead on tax reform or immigration reform. Looking to the next election to give him a governing majority in Congress, he is following a political mirage.

Obama approached the presidency, as if he could create the world anew. Hence, he ignored history and eschewed finding the center of gravity in American politics. Our most reform minded presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, realized that change had to come in stages and with the broadest support practicable.
Since the mid-1940s, presidents who sought bi-partisan compromise achieved the most important legislative reforms. Franklin Roosevelt worked with Republicans to gain the GI Bill of Rights; Harry Truman got a Republican Congress to pass the Marshall Plan; Dwight Eisenhower and a Democratic Congress passed the Interstate Highway Bill; Lyndon Johnson worked with Republican Senators to break the Southern Democratic filibuster and pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act; Richard Nixon signed a raft of consumer and environmental laws that came though a Democratic Congress; Ronald Reagan received Democratic support for his tax proposals and defense build-up; George H.W. Bush worked with Democrats to pass the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act; Bill Clinton’s most important reform the Welfare Reform Act came from a Republican Congress; and even George W. Bush was able to get bi-partisan support for his Prescription Drug Bill and for the No-Child-Left Behind education program.

The failures of Obamacare come from its very origins – its passage with no Republican support. For example, both parties could claim ownership of the GI Bill of Rights, the Marshall Plan, the Interstate Highway Act, the Civil Rights Bills, and the early environmental laws. None of these laws faced the kind of resistance in their implementation that Obamacare has.

After the next presidential election the political terrain may still be same; but the occupant of the White House will not be. Reviving the center will be that president’s task. The first step will be to find a broad common ground upon which bi-partisan coalitions can be built. The elements are there. Many in both parties see the same problems: an incomprehensible tax system; entitlement programs that threaten to consume the entire federal budget; an immigration system that keeps talented people out and lets many undesirables in; a newly over-bureaucratized health care system; failing public schools in the inner cities; the loss of good jobs for working class people; duplicative and ineffective federal programs and agencies.

Bi-partisan coalitions on different issues can be constructed. The Simpson-Bowles Commission was a near miss. Its mandate was to find common proposals on taxes and spending, endorse them with a strong majority of the members, and send its recommendations to the Congress for an up or down vote. It was within three votes of that strong majority. This gave Obama the excuse for ducking its recommendations. Using the Simpson-Bowles model, the next president could set the stage and move away from our debilitating stalemate. He or she could create a number of such commissions, urge them to find bi-partisan solutions and present their findings to Congress for an up or down vote. In some cases no agreement will be found or the Congress will vote some recommendations down. But some may go through. If these commissions were to have the same reasonable discussions that took place on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, they could set the tone for a more civilized dialogue where things are actually possible. Thus, the juvenile voices that we hear on places like MSNBC could be pushed further into irrelevancy. One can at least hop.

A line of Pennsylvania politicians served their country as ministers to the court of the Russian Tsars during the 19th century. They did their duty, but mainly wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

The cast includes Albert Gallatin, the Treasury Secretary and Jeffersonian Democrat from Fayette County and George Mifflin Dallas, his young aide from a prominent Philadelphia family and future vice president of the United States; future president James Buchanan and two bitter Republican political rivals, Sen. Simon Cameron and Gov. Andrew Curtin. READ MORE »

1964 is a watershed year punctuated with landmark events that foreshadowed major changes in society and politics to come.

In this year of the Civil Rights Act, two women candidates, one in Pennsylvania and one on the national scene, ran groundbreaking candidacies for high elective office.

Genevieve Blatt was the first woman to win a party nomination for U.S. senator in Pennsylvania in 1964. A decade earlier, she became the first woman elected to a statewide office.

Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican U.S. senator from Maine, was the first woman to run for a major party presidential nomination and have her name placed in nomination at a major party convention in 1964. She scored other firsts too – the first woman to win a Senate seat in her own right in 1948 and not follow a deceased husband.

The outcome of this year’s gubernatorial race could produce something that Pennsylvanians haven’t seen for nearly 50 years – a one-term governor.

All governors elected since 1970 have won reelection to a second consecutive term allowed under the Pennsylvania Constitution.

But Gov. Tom Corbett’s low poll numbers raise the distinct possibility of a break with this tradition.

Less than a quarter of voters (24 percent) have a strongly or somewhat favorable view of Corbett, while almost half of voters (48 percent) view him somewhat or strongly unfavorably, according to a recent poll by Franklin and Marshall College.

The poll of 580 registered voters was conducted between Jan. 22 and Jan. 27
and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

The idea of allowing governors to succeed themselves by election was debated during the 1950s and 1960s – a time of constitutional revision as state, local and federal government grew larger and more complex to meet the needs of a changing society. READ MORE »

The independent journalist I.F. Stone, a man of the 20th century, would have delighted in the plethora of blogs and posts on the Internet.

Stone (1907-1989) would have seen it as an advancement of freedom of thought and expression, a favorite topic of his. This interest led him to write The Trial of Socrates about the trial and execution of the philosopher Socrates for teachings that veered too far from conventional thought in ancient Athens.

A blogger I think would enjoy reading Izzy Stone’s works. He wrote extremely well and with grace about a wide variety of topics drawing on his wide knowledge of politics, history, international relations, science, philosophy and religion. READ MORE »

Yesterday journalist Pete DeCoursey was laid to rest. The funeral was attended by family, many of his friends, journalist colleagues, as well as former Governor Ed Rendell, the current Lt. Governor Jim Cawley, and two former Speakers of the Pennsylvania House, Bob O’Donnell and Dennis O’Brien. Many wonderful tributes have been put into print as well as expressed in the social media. One of them blogged by WHYY’s Dave Davies was reprinted in the funeral program. It captures Pete magnificently, and I have reprinted it below.

Pete DeCoursey, one of a kind

When I heard last week that Pete DeCoursey had died, it hit me like a punch to the chest.
I knew he’d gone to the hospital for lung surgery recently, but he’d been battling pancreatic cancer for so many years that I’d just come to believe that he would beat it, that he’d always be around.
Pete was a friendly giant of a man and a journalistic giant in Harrisburg, where he stalked the capitol as bureau chief for the online service Capitolwire. He knew more about the workings of state politics and government than just about anybody, and was relentlessly devoted to learning more.
Every December, when the state’s politicians descend on midtown Manhattan for the three days of schmoozing known as the Pennsylvania Society, the working journalists usually assemble for a Friday night dinner to share some laughs and things we can’t in print or broadcast.
Pete was missing this year, and you couldn’t help but notice. We traded Pete stories, but I didn’t hear anybody speak as if Pete were on his death bed. Like I said, you just figured he’d always be around.
It occurred to me at some point that maybe two thirds of the reporters at the table had been mentored in some way by Pete. He was generous about sharing his knowledge and insight, and always encouraged aspiring journalists.
I got to know him a different way.

A guy you noticed
More than 20 years ago, this guy showed up at the Sunday pick-up softball game that was a treasured ritual of my life. He was tall, probably 6 foot seven, with a noticeably large, round head and a close-cropped red beard.
This guy, Pete, had a gift for annoying the players on the opposite team. It wasn’t something he tried to do. It was a gift.
He’d smash a line hard line drive for a double, then, with the infielders playing back the next time he came up, hit a dribbler toward second and chug safely to first, leaving the second baseman steaming.
And he’d keep up a steady banter during the game that would get under his opponents’ skins – nothing nasty or profane, just the kind of cleverly informed needling that would leave them talking to, and doubting themselves.
Years later many governors of this state would recognize the DeCoursey treatment, as Pete would get onto a subject and simply refuse to let go until he got a meaningful response.
When Pete had a question, he was a dog after a bone.

Finding his craft
Pete was a Philly guy, and back in the softball days, he worked for politicians. He was an aide to City Councilwoman Ann Land (later defeated by Michael Nutter on his way up the ladder), and he worked for Democratic Congressman Bob Borski, a good guy.
After a few years he started missing some Sunday softball games, and I heard it was because he’d started a new career as a reporter for the Reading Eagle.
Figured. Pete wasn’t the kind of guy who would be satisfied telling only half the story, the way you have to in politics.
He spent maybe six years at the Eagle, then became a capitol reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot and eventually the heart and soul of Capitolwire.
I’d see Pete over the years, and every time I did I would learn something I didn’t know. Afterward I might be a little irritated that I hadn’t made the connection Pete had between some politician’s position on a policy issue and his relationship with a union boss.
Kind of like the old days, playing third base and having Pete pull a ground ball past me, just out of reach for a key hit. Damn that guy – how does he do that?
I last saw Pete a couple of months ago, when we both covered State Treasurer Rob McCord’s campaign kick-off for governor. Pete had already seen McCord in Harrisburg, but he’d made the drive to McCord’s Philadelphia event because he knew he would see and talk to different people, learn more, connect more.
He worked the room every minute he could, asking questions and soaking up information. As I said, he always wanted to learn more.
I’ll miss Pete, and I’m sure the capitol just won’t be the same for a while.
But I know people in Harrisburg will be trading stories about him for a long time.
There’s a memorial service for Pete in Philadelphia on Saturday, Jan. 11 at 11 a.m. at Christ Church & St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, at the corner of Tulpehocken & McCallum Streets. The family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to a scholarship fund for Pete’s children, Ben and Ellie. Donations can be sent in their name to Pete’s address: 157 Lucknow Rd., Harrisburg, PA 17110.

Pennsylvania has had a love-hate affair with lotteries since the Quakers first frowned on them. While 2014 could bring a major expansion of the Pennsylvania Lottery with the addition of keno, the tide was moving in the opposite direction during the 1830s when the Lottery spell was broken. READ MORE »